Marines, Guardsmen duel in pulse-pounding exercise to seize Tinian

TINIAN—The two MV-22 Ospreys were spotted about 10am Saturday morning.

They moved over the low sky and tree line, these tilt-rotor wonders, holding our attention and ending the wait.

A member of Guam’s Army National Guard, Company A, 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry scans the perimeter in an island seizure exercise on Tinian on Sept. 20 during Valiant Shield 2014. (DENNIS B. CHAN)

Media could not get as close as we wanted, as we were warned of the chunks of gravel that could fly into our cameras from the Ospreys’ powerful rotors.

Nevertheless, we started running toward them once they landed.

They didn’t stay long, however, as the U.S. infantry Marines they dropped slipped out quickly onto the runway.

Efforts to catch the Marines emerging from the jungle later also proved unsuccessful.

Instead, media joined Guam’s Army National Guard—the “bad guys”—of this exercise at their objective: an abandoned and crumbling Japanese administration building loaded with wasp nests.

There they perched, on their third day outdoors waiting, with some men stationed high on the second floor, their guns and eyes fixed on the woodline around them.

Some of the other Guardsmen lay on the grass and slopes behind the building, barely saying a word, guns mounted.

“We also have observation posts pushed out in each direction to give us an eye and early warning, so if they come across the enemy they will open fire,” said Sgt. First Class Edward Cruz.

He said they have all areas covered—“north, east, south, west,”—in a 360-angle for their defense of the building.

Soon, the glare and relative calm of that hot Saturday morning were shattered by loud and abrupt shots fired deep in the jungle surrounding the building.

Guys locked in, guns were pointed, and shouts along the line were yelled as lungs tightened with anticipation.

Then a white tourist bus showed up from around a side trail, approaching the building. It was told to turn around.

Soon after, amid fire, two members of the advance observation guard came running out the jungle, lugging their guns and yelling, with the paint on their faces smeared with sweat.

The Marines were coming, it seemed all at once, through the jungle to flank the building.

An adrenaline pounding, staccato burst of gunfire—riotous and deafening through my earplugs—began.

Defenses consolidated at the rear of the building, where the Marines began to emerge from the jungle.

I, however, couldn’t see the “enemy” approach. The jungle denied visibility.

Yet the Guardsmen were firing, and firing with abandon, with smoke rolling off one man’s rifle languidly, sensually, like smoke coming off one’s lips after a good, clean drag on a cigarette.

I’m pretty sure over a thousand rounds were fired that morning.

As they were trained, the Guardsmen slipped to the second floor, after holding down fire on the advancing enemy.

They waited from atop the stairs, rifles screaming fire from above.

The Marines came through anyway.

“Bang-bang-bang,” I heard one say, climbing the stairs.

It was over soon.

Pretty intense for what you call “practice,” I thought.

For Capt. Phillipe Rigaud, who led the Marines that day, the low visibility caused by the jungle was part of the plan.

He said he expected to be heard but not necessarily spotted until both Guardsmen and Marines were locked in a “really close fight.”

“We knew we were going to take some risk on them being able to hear us, but we knew we were able to mask our forces, which we did, so everybody came out at once instead of piecemealing at one time,” he said.

On the terrain he just led his men through, he said Tinian is comparatively flat compared to Hawaii or Okinawa but the temperature is the same and the jungles are similar.

For the Guam Army National Guard, the chance to train with other services, which Valiant Shield provides, is valuable.

“It’s a good operation. It gives us a chance to work with our fellow service members, and get to see how they conduct their mission and we can see how conducts ours, and get tips from each other,” Cruz said.